Adding gore to a photoshoot

Want to spice up a photo? Why not add some blood?
I'll use a photo of Perth Wolverine and our very own Lady Lauren and spice it up a little.

Step 1
Load the photo into the GIMP. As you've no doubt heard countless times before, I love the GIMP! The easiest way is to right click on the image and select "open with GIMP"

Step 2
Create an empty transparent layer and call it "claws"

Step 3
Select the original photo layer and call it "lauren getting stabbed"

Step 4
On the background layer we want to make it look like the claws have punctured Lady Lauren's abdomen. The easiest way (and only way I know) is to use the "clone" tool. Select an area slightly above the tip of a claw on Lady Lauren's by clicking whilst holding ctrl. Now release the ctrl key and "paint" over some of the claw to make it disappear. Be ready to undo a lot of your strokes as it can be quite tricky to get it to look just so.

Step 5
Once you have your claws looking how you'd like them we are going to create a copy of the claws and add them to the transparent "claws" layer. Strictly speaking this part is not essential but it you are going to skip this step you are just going to make your life needlessly more difficult than it needs to be. Use the "paths" tool to select the ends of the claws and hit "selection from path" to convert the path to a selection.

Ctrl+C to copy the selection. Now select the "claws" layer and hit Ctrl+V to paste and then click the "anchor button" to anchor it to the "claws" layer.

Step 6
Now the fun part .... adding the blood!
First we get a nice red colour which we will be using as the base colour for the blood. I like the colour #8A0707. Select this colour. Select the "lauren getting stabbed" layer and using a fuzzy paint brush paint roughly around the parts where the claws appear to puncture the abdomen. Because the "claws" layer is above the layer we are working on we don't have to worry about not painting the claws by accident.

Now select the "smudge" tool and "rub" the edge of the blood stain

To add a more realism, Lady Lauren suggests making the blood darker around the entry points. This really sells the illusion! Select colour #4d0404 and just paint or dab along the entry points. Then smudge the colour in as before

Step 7
Adding blood to the claws
Create a new layer called "claws blood".

And click the up arrow on the layers dialog to raise it to the top

Now select the "claws" layer. Then right click (or do whatever you do on Macs) and select "Alpha to Selection"

Select the "claws blood" layer and paint the claws. Make it a little jagged towards the fist to simulate dripping blood.

Smudge the blood around the jagged area and maybe smudge in some darker blood colours (not done in this example) then set the "Layer mode" to "overlay"

Finally duplicate that layer (the "claws blood" layer) 3 or 4 times

And you are done!